Story Flow Quotes

I try to let go of the intellect and just tell the story. I only read the page I have in front of me on the screen. Then when the whole story is told, I print it, wait a week and read it.

And while dollars have little to do with it, the fiction writer should be asking the same question any capable film producer would ask: Is this scene truly necessary? It is the kind of thinking that, put into practice, results in a story with a sense of energy and direction.

A director shouldn't get in the way of the movie, the story should.

It took time to learn that the hard thing about writing is to let the story write itself, while one sits at the typewriter and does as little thinking as possible. It happened over and over again, and the beginner learned - when you start puzzling over an idea, and slowing down on the keys, the writing gets worse and worse.

It's always very important to me to try to create a story that feels unpredictable. You can't jump ahead and see what's coming, but at the end, when you've watched the whole thing, it all feels inevitable.

If you do weave one-liners into a story, you have to have an overall story as well, otherwise it doesn't really count as narrative.

Plot is a map and I begin with it. It is what made me admire the novels of the 19th century; that the stories are foreshadowed. TheyÕre going someplace.

If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it-bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn't belong there.

When you're putting together a concept album, it's all about the flow and the story.

Rewriting isn't just about dialogue; it's the order of the scenes, how you finish a scene, how you get into a scene.

When you start writing the magic comes when the characters seem to take on a life of their own and write the words for themselves.

Traditional fiction has a little bit of spatial exploration but is basically a question of time - the question is, what happens next?

A structure is a bit like a story. People will go along with you - they see where you're going.

As a writer I'm essentially just trying to impersonate a first-time reader, who picks up the story and has to decide, at every point, whether to keep going.

The key to making good movies is to pay attention to the transition between scenes.

People think in narratives - in beginnings, middles and ends. The danger when you edit something too severely is that it no longer makes sense; worse still, it leaves people with the disquieting impression that something is being hidden.

The best scripts I read are usually pretty - they move really quickly, there's not a lot of exposition in between all of what's happening, so you can really just flow with the lines, and you're reading and it has a momentum and you understand it emotionally.

Sometimes you can have a great scene but it just doesn't need to be in the movie. If it's not progressing the plot, not progressing the story, not adding to the momentum, or if it's not purposefully serving a breath - it has got to go.

I started moving into online work, and that exposed me to design and the impact it has on the flow, shape, and narrative of the story. This got me thinking that maybe this is a way of doing journalism, a way of telling stories and revealing patterns.

Every sentence must do one of two things-reveal character or advance the action.

Once you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don't tell them.

When asked for advice by beginners. Know your ending, I say, or the river of your story may finally sink into the desert sands and never reach the sea.

Certainly as an actor, half of your work is not going to end up on the screen anyway, because in the editorial process, they need to cut to the other actor in the scene. Very often, your best work ends up on the cutting room floor, because it just doesn't work with the overall narrative drive of the story.

The last sentence in a piece is another adventure. It should open the piece up.

There are many ingredients that go into making a film. It baffles me, what works and what doesn't.